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CCS Nationals - Francesca Metcalf

It’s been a pretty busy end of the semester, but finally, I’m finished with finals and able to focus on climbing a bit more. This summer will hopefully be filled with a whole ton of climbing trips and a few competitions in there too. A few weeks ago was CCS Nationals in Melbourne, FL, which was the biggest competition I had done in a few months. This was my second time competing at CCS Nationals, and again, it was probably my favorite competition of the year. This year was even more awesome than last year though because we had so many people from GA Tech go. Last year there were only four of us, but this year there were 10. Our whole club is very close knit, and being able to hang out and compete with them is always a blast.

We flew in Friday morning with my two sisters, one of which was also competing and the other judging, for qualifiers Friday afternoon. Qualifiers were four hours long, which was a lot for those used to only two-hour competitions. The gym was pretty small, though, for a national competition so lines were long and there were plenty of climbs to work on. Again, it was so much fun being able to climb with my club mates, as well as many other climbers who I’ve known for years, or I’ve meet during the year at local CCS competitions.

The format of the comp was pretty different from last year in that there were three finals- bouldering, sport and speed- and each person could only compete in one discipline. I chose to compete in bouldering and I went into bouldering finals in first place. After not competing for a while, it’s always such an adrenaline rush to be in finals again. The crowd was really engaged and excited to be there, and so was I. All three climbs were tricky, and very interesting and fun. I finished all three of them, allowing me to keep my first place ranking. Two other Georgia Tech climbers were also in finals-Ryan Copeland, also a Five Ten athlete, who placed 7th in bouldering, and Dallas Dean, who placed 2nd in speed. Thanks to all of our climbers, Georgia Tech was able to place third for the second year in a row in team rankings. Congrats to all of the climbers at the comp- I can’t wait for next year!